


Going to Bed Hungry

by Morgan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-01
Updated: 2010-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:05:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgan/pseuds/Morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is broke and hungry. Both those thing mean more than just the obvious. Sam's POV on arriving at Stanford - and the reason why he left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going to Bed Hungry

Sam hasn't dealt with this particular problem in a while.

He thought the worst part about leaving Dean and dad would be leaving.   
He's flat out broke and kind of desperate, he's so hungry.

In his duffle he has his transcripts, his best ratty old second hand clothes, which amount to something like five t-shirts, two long-sleeves, three shirts, some sweats and two pairs of jeans. There are a couple of books and a couple of note books and some pens and some miscellaneous odds and ends. There is also two blades, a small bag of salt, chalk sticks and maybe some other stuff that he doesn't want to think about right now. He didn't bring a gun.

Being broke like this is nothing new.   
Being broke like this and alone? That is.

Sam knows without a shadow of a doubt that he has to get some money and fast. He doesn't even hardly have any starting capital, so hustling is pretty much out of the question. Besides he's starting a new life here, on the straight and narrow. It's just looking a little too narrow right now.

Stanford's money is good. Classes are going to be awesome. Everything is as he envisioned it. He has a place to stay and he's all set. Only problem is he's broke. Broke as fuck. Penniless, out of cash, penurious, destitute, impecunious. He's got the words, he's just not got the money.

Sam needs a job, is what he needs. Sam needs to get right on that first thing tomorrow morning. For now he's in his room, his roommate hasn't shown up yet. Sam is going to bed hungry and that's no joke. Sam's going to bed hungry and on a bare mattress, 'cause he is broke. It would be kind of funny if it wasn't so acute and so in your face.

He got on the bus. Shit. He never thought he was going to make it on to the fucking bus, but he did. It was very hard and very easy. Dad had been so angry. Sam kind of relished that. John fucking Winchester, the big bad-ass hero, always such a stoic, always so full of war stories and "you got to keep your heads, boys" had screamed at him and the veins in his neck had damned near popped he was so mad.

Sam hadn't even bothered trying to reason with him. He didn't want to, really. Leaving had been in his plans for a long while, at least two years. He had to go. He had to get out. It was killing him. He couldn't take it anymore. All those near misses and the fatal stumbling blind desperation ate at him and he had to get out. The world was too fucking big for him to stay locked in that life any longer.

Sam had thought he would have Dean by his side.   
More fool Sam.

Sam hasn't eaten since yesterday morning. His stomach is down to gnawing on itself now and he can hear it growling almost constantly. He's been through this before too. Survival exercises and just long days of no food other times they've been jammed up, but Sam can't think of that now because if he does he's going to start thinking about Dean and he doesn't want to do that just yet.

He bought bottled water for the trip and he goes to fill the empty bottle at the tap in the bathroom and then he brushes his teeth, hoping that will tell his body to give up already, but it doesn't. He thinks about the breakfast he threw up before walking out the door. Shit. That was definitely a waste of resources. He's just so goddamned hungry. He tries reading for a while, but the paperback he's got can't really hold his interest. His mind keeps drifting.

Sam finally just gives it up and sits on the bare mattress with his back to the wall and thinks "Jesus". Right on the heels of that he thinks "Dean". Fuck. Sam remembers being sixteen and having Dean make him mac'n'cheese, his all time favourite. He remembers everything.

Okay. So. Survival training. What you need to know is that there are some basic responses you keep an eye out for right from the get go when you haven't had anything to eat for a while. To be able to function, work and think you need energy. Once you start depleting your resources you will get tired. You might get a headache. Ability to concentrate and make decisions will deteriorate. You will be quick to temper and you will get more selfish. Those are just the basic physiological responses to any survival situation without food. Sam falls back on his training. He's been through worse things than going to bed hungry. And alone.

It's the alone part that makes it worse.

It's late. It's really fucking late. He can't go out and try to charm a meal out of someone, it's something like three in the morning. He is completely out of options here. All he can do is try and go to sleep. Only problem is, he's not tired enough, and his stomach is a huge empty void and his head is a mess. He's got the jitters like you always get in a new place the first couple of days, but he is real good with that, completely used to it. He has some basic techniques to get himself through it. That's fine, he can handle it.

He misses Dean like a lost limb, but he's got ways to get himself through that too. Sam tries really hard to turn away from thoughts of Dean as soon as they crop up, but for some reason he's got his phone out and he's sitting there staring at the display like a fucking idiot. He puts it down, tells himself he only wanted to check the time and swallows the lump in his throat. It's just fatigue.

Dad. Sam thinks of his father's angry closed-off face, the look of abject horror when he realized Sam wasn't backing down this time. Sam had been backing down for years. He had been following orders. He had been letting Dean talk him into things. He had been trying, in part for Dean's sake, to be a good boy, to fall in line. Truth of it was that he had mostly been biding his time, working on Dean to see if he could pry Dean away from the hunter lifestyle for a couple of years.

He just wanted to… Sam wanted to give him a chance. That was all. He wanted to give Dean a chance at another life. In a way he had wanted to give John a chance too, to let them go, to let them have this instead of the twisted freak show circus act they normally called a life. He should have known better.

Dad was fucked up about it, angry as all hell. He saw it as a betrayal that Sam didn't want to tow the line. God. It wasn't like Sam hadn't told him time and time again that he needed to do something more with his life. It wasn't like he hadn't tried to explain, at least at first, but dad had just patted him on the head and acted like Sam would grow out of it.

Sam had grown into it instead. Halfway out the door at seventeen and all the fucking way out the door a couple of days ago. It hadn't even hurt when John told him "you walk out that door, don't you bother coming back". Sam thinks that probably hurt John more than it could ever hurt him judging from the thready note of desperation in his tone hiding behind the anger. Sam had already made up his mind. You gonna threaten someone you have to have something to hold over their head. John had squat.

Dean.   
Dean had…

Sam turns his thoughts away from that. Rubs absently at that spot between his eyes that begins to hurt now, like he's about to start crying or something. It's just fatigue and hunger. That's all. The phone is back in his free hand again and when he looks down at it where it rests in his upturned palm on his jeans clad thigh, he's looking at Dean's number on the display. Fuck. Dean. Christ. How can it hurt this bad?

Sam kind of wants to chuck the phone at the wall, but he isn't going to. Flash flood of emotions rolling through him fast and hard and his stomach unsettled and he's so fucking glad he's out of there, except… Dean.

The thing about that is that it makes Sam want to roll himself into a foetal position and cover his head with his arms pressed tight, tight to his ears so all he can hear is the sound of his own blood rushing hard in his veins.

If he calls there's no guarantee that Dean will even pick up. If he calls and Dean is heart hard and hurting Sam might not even get to hear him hiss out his name like a curse. He deserves that and probably worse.

He puts the phone down gingerly on the mattress at the end where there should be a pillow if he had enough money to go and get one.

Sam would turn to Dean on automatic because there was no one else. Sam would turn to Dean because it was all he knew how to do when he was this fucked up. His mind is clamouring at him now though, loud and sharp and kind of shrill that that's all done with. He can't turn to Dean anymore because he had left him behind. No doubt about it, no room for plausible deniability.

Instead of the newfound sense of freedom that Sam figures most kids get when they hit college, and he has all the lore to build that notion on, Sam's suddenly shouldering a whole new burden that he hadn't even imagined. Nothing in him has helped him foresee this. There is no way to lessen the ache. Sam wants to be allowed to have things. Like the spoiled bratty child of some rich family in a bad sitcom he wants to just holler for what he wants and have it brought to him.

Everything Sam owns is grifted or bought with stolen money. Everything he had was essentially, if you took a long hard look at it, left behind at some way station or other because it didn't fit in his duffel or he couldn't keep it in the Impala.

The constants are just different for Sam, is all. He doesn't have all his old soccer trophies or drawings he made in second grade or anything like that. He hasn't saved all the miscellanea of their tumbleweed existence. He's got skills instead. He's got scars. He's got the training and the five thousand things he can do. That's okay. That's fine.

Dean. He… Sam had Dean. At least in the tenuous way you can have someone like Dean. He had his brother's loyalty and devotion and unswerving, constant vigilance. It wasn't all he wanted, though, and that was the bitch of the thing.

Sixteen and drunk on adrenaline and the PBRs Dean had kept plying him with Sam had overplayed his hand. Badly.

They had been in the backseat of the Impala, because it was raining so hard they had nowhere else to go. The rain made it feel like they were the only two survivors of some bleak holocaust and Sam had forgotten for just a few seconds that they might be in the backseat, but they weren't in the backseat like Dean was with pretty girls everywhere and anywhere. It had seemed possible to Sam. Their shoulders notched together and Dean clinking their bottles, getting him so drunk he had trouble differentiating Dean's body heat from the heat in his own blood.

There had been this weird, long dream slow drunk moment where he had angled a look up at his brother's face and seen him in the flicker of rain and weird light and he had been thinking of something else, obviously, parting his lips to breathe his brother's name and it came out of him in a slow slur that sounded so pleading he had been surprised himself.

Dean looking back at him warm and fond and Sam had though "want him" and just like that, Dean's eyes glittering at him, he had raised himself up the last inch and pressed drink numb lips to Dean's. For a long shockingly acute moment it had been possible. Dean had kissed him back, or at least that's how Sam remembers it, Dean's lips moving slick against his and it was so cleanly perfect Sam had spilled some of his beer on his own chest, bottle pressed to his shirt and then Dean has made this choked-off gasping noise and pushed him away, scrambling for the door and almost falling out into the rain.

That was Sam's wake-up call. Dean standing just outside the open door looking at Sam like he was suddenly some unknown and unquantifiable entity. The gut-wrenching sensation that Sam didn't know himself well enough. Sam had been drunk, sure, but it wasn't the beer, it was Dean's presence that set him off and that meant something.

Dean never said anything about it. He had got back in the car after a while, climbing into the driver seat and hooking an arm over the backrest to just look at Sam for a few long moments before he shook his head, not like he was shaking his head at Sam, but like he was shaking his head at life in general or some voice inside his own head. Sam had wanted to push forward, grab that motion and still it. Kiss Dean some more, get him to stop doing that and start nodding yes instead. He wanted a less clearly defined agreeance out of Dean and he figured out quickly that he wanted it perpetually, boundlessly.

Sam is plenty smart enough to know that was never going to happen. Not that night, not never. Dean dealt with it in his patented way. Avoid, evade and repress. It hadn't happened. Except for how it really, very much did. Sam couldn't stop the avalanche in his mind once it started and everything suddenly cascaded and broke in rivers and crashing rocks. You can't stop something like that. It's not physically possible. He broke in swift stages over the days and weeks and months that followed. Mostly because that feeling didn't go away and Sam desperately needed it to.

It made the decision to leave easier. It made every day really fucking difficult because he couldn't even look at Dean without this gnawing corrosion becoming immediate and undeniable. It was like falling in love, only worse, so much worse because there was a solid heat of want underneath that only the volatile desperation of being a teenager and lost in a situation like that could create. Sam wanted out. Sam wanted out so desperately he threw himself into school with everything he had, and that was a lot as it turned out.

Like some psyched out POW Sam worked on his escape tunnel every day and every night for two years, digging with a broken spoon at the unyielding loyalty demanded by John and the dogged attention of his brother. Sam never wavered in his love for Dean, but he hated it. He hated how it had slid so uselessly into something that could undo them as easily as keep them safe and protected.

There were other moments, less auspicious, but none the less wrecking for all that. Dean taking off his shirt to wipe grime off his face and the band of skin and shifting muscle that his hiked up t-shirt revealed made Sam dry-mouthed and so fucking hungry for him he could have done something desperate.

Dean giving him that half grin of understanding and complicity that made Sam's stomach bottom out every time.

It wasn't once or twice, it wasn't fits and starts and occasional one-off things, it was a warm constant. And like that the ache in Sam's chest never got a chance to give. He was tearing himself into pieces to keep his feet on level ground and not just go after Dean like he wanted to. He feigned disinterest and groused at Dean, getting more and more snappish daily until he really was acting like a "pissy little bitch" as Dean so aptly named him.

Sam never stood a chance, so he had to get out. And that's all there was to it.

So, now there's palm trees and fucking archways and warm yellow buildings and sunshine all the damned time and Sam's just... Broken. Broke. Alone. Hungry.

The money thing isn't... it's not as stupid as it seems and it's not as accidental. He had put some by to make sure that this wouldn't happen, but there was that thing at the hospital some weeks ago and that wasn't something Sam could foresee and there was just no time to do anything about it except fork over his cash stash unless he wanted to watch Dean bleed out on the floor. Not an option. So… Broke. Alone. Hungry.

Sam tells himself "I've had worse" and that's true, he has had worse, but it's also true that he's never been this alone before. He wanted out and he got out and now he is all a-fucking-lone behind enemy lines and there's no one (Dean) to call (Dean).

Sam tries to think about something else, but he can't help flashing on these moments between him and Dean like they are talismans he can hold and turn over and over in his mind until they start meaning something else, something he can be easier about. Loving Dean like this only ever made Sam miserable. He does the only thing he can. He gets up off the bed, resolutely leaving the phone lying there like a viper waiting to strike.

Sam hasn't unpacked his duffle yet. He thinks of it now, figuring he needs to change into his sweats and a clean tee and try to close his eyes for a few hours, shake the jitters. He's going to count the coins rattling around in the side pocket along with lost buttons and paperclips and pieces of chalk and other forgotten odds and ends to see if he can at least get some kind of coffee for breakfast.

He lets his mind go blank as he drags the duffle with him to the bed by the strap. He'll fold his coat for a pillow and just try and think of a way to get some money tomorrow.

Sam is used to some routines, salt at the windows and door. One chalked symbol of protection on the inside of the door, one over his bed and that helps create some kind of peace of mind for him so he sticks his hand in the side pocket to get some chalk and his fingers land on an unfamiliar familiarly shaped object.

At the bottom of the pocket there is a huge wad of cash. Mostly tens and twenties, but he can see Grant and Franklin in there too. It's folded twice and held together by a rubber band, the way Dean always does it. Sam sits down heavily, ass gliding off the corner on the bed and landing hard on the floor.

He pulls his knees up and just stares at the money with unseeing eyes. For the first time since he walked out the door, head down to avoid his father not looking at him, Sam thinks "what have I done?" and he thinks "Dean" and the hole in his stomach swells and takes over his entire chest cavity. His heart is just rattling around in there now, decimated and desiccated and beating erratically.

This isn't homesickness. This is Sam loving Dean with everything he's got and Dean proving himself to be loyal, constant and ceaseless in his care. Sam thinks about that night again. The way the rain ran in rivulets down the windows and Sam sat leaning on his brother, feeling each breath in the rise of Dean's chest. He thinks of the way Dean had looked, all smiling and easy and genuinely happy to just be sitting in the car with his kid brother. He thinks about the way Dean's lips fit to his, like it was just right.

Going to bed hungry isn't anything new.   
Sam has been doing it for years.

 

END


End file.
